At 11:55 04/02/01 -0800, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
middle ground: there are some headers that are intended for consumption by
computers where ISO-8859-1 or some similar format is acceptable, which I
think solves your issues, but there are other headers, primarily those
dealing with the PERSON, as opposed to the server or the transport, where
we can't make these kinds of limitations.
I very much hope that we can avoid the mistake to use iso-8859-1.
It's a "middle ground", but in a bad sense. It does not give
enough functionality (i.e. enough characters), but eats up the
whole 8-bit space. For something global, it's a total dead end.
I think we need to, for instance, come up with a single term that defines
"Message Subject", and there's no reason why that can't be represented
internally in 8859-1.
For the names of header fields (i.e. Subject:, From:, Date:,...),
or whatever will be the equivalent in a new protocol, US-ASCII is
enough. Nothing more is needed. Of course, these can/should be
converted to more understandable labels in the language of the
user by user interfaces. For the values of most of these
fields (e.g. except Date:,...), iso-8859-1 is by way not enough.
Regards, Martin.